Tabula Rasa
by Tori Stone
Summary: After her plane crashes, Sam finds herself in the company of 45 other survivors on a seemingly deserted island. But nothing's ever exactly as it seems; her fellow survivors are proof of that. Even she has a few secrets to hide. But as strangers become allies and secrets unfold, they realize that the most dangerous obstacle they face is the island - especially what lives there.
1. Chapter 1

**This is something I've been working on for a few weeks now. I was a little hesitant to post it tonight, since I kind of wanted to have the whole thing done before I published it, but I can't stand the fact that I'm done with Wide Awake. Blah.**

**This is going to start of VERY similar to the television show _Lost_. I swear, though, after the first few chapters it will separate from the show. I guess this is my version of _Lost_...the way I thought it was gonna go. Mixed with DP, of course, because apparently I'm incapable of writing anything else for this website.**

**I chose the name because _tabula rasa_ is Latin for 'blank slate,' for those of you who don't know. You'll understand why as the story progresses.**

**Okay, I think that's pretty much it from me for now. I don't own Danny Phantom, Lost, or anything else you recognize.**

**Rating might go up. Maybe. We'll see.**

**Enjoy (:**

* * *

**Tabula Rasa**

**Chapter One**

**February 22, 2014**

* * *

Being a close friend and side-kick of Danny Phantom for a good portion of her life meant a lot of unconsciousness. Sam Manson grew quite accustomed to getting knocked out; it hardly bothered her anymore, especially considering most of the time it meant waking up in the meticulous care of Danny himself. Sam could count on one hand the number of times she had awoken in an unfamiliar environment. There was only one occasion in which she was completely alone, and she'd never been so disoriented that it caused a panic. Her first reaction upon realizing she had been knocked out was to immediately assess her surroundings while keeping her eyes firmly closed and body perfectly still. This usually lead her to figuring out if the situation was still dangerous, who she was with, and whether or not she was alone with said person or people. This information, in turn, generally calmed her racing heart and allowed her to analyze a possible escape method if one was needed.

On one particularly sweltering June afternoon, Sam suddenly became aware of the fact that she was flat on her back. She squeezed her eyes shut against bright lights as a nauseating wave of pain twisted in her abdomen, threatening to spill the scant contents of her stomach. Slowly, so as not to aggravate the nausea, Sam inhaled through her nose. The surface beneath her was hard and uneven, telling her that she was not carefully tucked into a bed.

Panic began to bubble in her chest, her heart threatening to burst, but she pushed it away with practiced ease. Quickly running through her mental check-list, she flexed her arms to find that she could move them freely. The fabric of her flannel shirt shifted against her biceps, telling her that she was still clothed. She dug her heels into the earth and lifted her hips slightly, deducing that she still had her pants and boots and that she was not restrained in any way.

She inhaled deeply again. The smell of ocean water and smoke nearly suffocated her; the sounds of crashing waves, people screaming, and a curious revving engine sounded about a hundred yards away from where she was laying.

Against her own better judgment, she allowed her eyes to pop open. Towering bamboo trees swayed easily in a soft breeze high above her head, the lazy action a direct contrast to the chaotic noise of the place. The light was watery and pale. She blinked rapidly, trying to get her bearings.

A deafening crash, quickly followed by several shrill screams, drew her attention to her left. Sam found that she was lying on her back on the edge of a bamboo grove, which was surrounded by a forest. The sunlight filtering through dusty air between tree branches combined with the sweltering heat suggested that it was late in the afternoon.

Another scream forced her bolt upright, drawing a hoarse cry of pain from her lips. She reached around to her left and pressed the palm of her hand into her side before drawing her hand back. It was glistening with blood. She swallowed hard.

Using the thin trunks of the bamboo trees around her, she pulled herself up to a standing position. Her eyes fluttered shut and she swayed backwards as another, more powerful wave of nausea washed over her, but she managed to keep herself steady. Glancing down to verify that her clothes were still mostly in-tact, she was still for only a moment longer before she began to run.

Towering trees stretched their limbs down, reaching for her, as she crashed through the forest. Her breaths came in gasps as the sounds of chaos grew closer and louder. She could hear other voices now, people calling for help or the names of loved ones or shouting instructions. She could see blue ahead and the smell of the ocean was so strong it nearly made her knees buckle.

With an unintentionally dramatic burst, Sam tore through a bush and skidded to a halt on the edge of a beach, sending a large amount of sand flying up in front of her face. It slithered around her boots and the movement momentarily drew her attention down, but she was quickly distracted by a flurry of activity to her left.

The remnants of a passenger plane sat in smoking ruins in the sand several yards away from where she stood. It was almost in the water. The nose and the tail were missing, but the right wing stood nearly broken in half at an angle over the beach. The engine from that wing was completely detached save for a thick tangle of wires, and it was the source of the revving sound she heard when she first regained consciousness. Dozens of people were sprinting in all different directions, some dragging motionless bodies away from the wreckage and the water, some attempting to gather luggage where it floated in the ocean, and still others trying to free those still trapped in the wreckage.

Her feet carried her forward before she was aware of making a decision to move. Sand flew through the air in her wake, but she hardly noticed, so focused was she on reaching the other survivors. A man in a torn suit with wild, dark eyes stood upon noticing her.

"Get them away from there!" He bellowed, pointing to her right. She nearly tripped as she stopped and whipped around to find him point to a man in a grey hoodie and ripped black jeans hunched over a motionless body just a few feet away from the revving engine. She glanced back at the man in the suit to find him administering CPR to a woman whose leg was bleeding profusely.

"Hey!" She screamed as she ran toward the engine. The turbine was still spinning, sucking air in like a giant vacuum. "Hey!" The man did not even turn to glance at her; he was desperately beating against the motionless man's chest. "Stop it, we have to move!"

"He's...not...breathing..." The man grunted, his voice barely audible over the deafening revving. He punctuated each word with a blow to the second man's chest.

They both grimaced and flinched as the engine gave a particularly powerful rev. Sam could feel herself sliding toward it, so with every ounce of strength she possessed, she seized the hood of the man's jacket and dragged him away.

They made it a total of fifty feet before the engine exploded. The force of it threw them both forward, face-first into the sand. Sam quickly pushed herself up on all-fours, turning back to stare at the mushroom cloud rising over the wreckage as she tried to catch her breath.

"Bloody hell," The man beside her whimpered.

"C'mon," Sam said, scrambling to her feet. "They still need help." Without waiting to see if he would follow, Sam jogged forward. A young woman with curly brown hair who looked no older than twenty-five was trying to drag an older, sobbing Asian woman whose forehead was bleeding through the sand; Sam quickly stooped and lifted the woman's feet. Together they were able to quickly move her to the edge of the beach, into the shade of the trees where the heat was slightly less oppressive. The brown-haired woman nodded in thanks, too out of breath to speak.

The next hour or so passed in a similar fashion. Between dragging people out of the wreckage, helping the man in the suit (whom she was beginning to think was a doctor), and gathering luggage, she wondered if it would ever end. Eventually, though, the panic began to settle down. She collapsed in the sand, positively drenched in sweat and the pain in her side nearly unbearable. Her muscles cried in relief at the break.

She peeled her flannel shirt off of her torso and carefully lifted the hem of her tattered undershirt up so that her midriff was exposed. A gash about the length of her hand from heel to fingertip was bleeding profusely over her ribcage. She turned her head away and sucked in a deep breath when she caught a whiff of the metallic substance, ignoring the nausea and the dizziness that made her head spin. She only ever reacted that way to her own blood. That was something she learned about herself when she was younger.

"That's gonna need stitches," A voice called to her left. She slowly turned her head and opened her eyes to find the man in the suit approaching her, calculating gaze fixated on her side.

She managed to choke out a laugh as he dropped to his knees at her side. "I'll get right on that," She muttered.

"I'm a doctor," He murmured, confirming her suspicions. "I know this isn't exactly an ideal situation, but I'm afraid it'll get infected if I don't close it quickly." He pulled a sewing kit from the pocket inside his suit jacket and rattled it rather ominously. Sam eyed the plastic container warily. "Please, I'll do it quickly. It'll only hurt for a little while, but it'll be much better than the treatment for whatever infection you would get if I don't."

"What's your name?" She asked, glancing up at his tan, sweaty face.

"Mark. I'm a cardiologist back in the States." Mark shook her hand and his grip was firm and steady.

"Sam," She breathed as he released her hand.

"It's nice to meet you, Sam. You were sitting a couple rows in front of me, weren't you?" Mark asked as he popped the sewing kit open and balanced it on a relatively flat rock to her left.

She closed her eyes and tried to picture the people she was surrounded by on the plane, but the only thing she clearly remembered between boarding the flight and waking up in the bamboo was the announcement that they were hitting a little turbulence coupled with the suggestion to fasten their seatbelts. "Uh, yeah. I think so." She lied. She opened her eyes and watched the sunlight bounce off the surface of the needle nestled innocently inside the kit. She blinked in confusion when he seemed to pull a small bottle of clear liquid with a sealed lid from thin air, which he balanced beside the kit. She did not recognize the brand on the label, but she definitely recognized the word 'vodka' beneath the brand. "Where'd you get that?"

"A flight attendant snuck it to me before the crash," He shrugged his jacket off and tossed to the sand behind him. "Well, she gave me three, but I drank one during the flight."

"Nice." Sam muttered. He was rolling his sleeves up, still visually assessing her wound. Her gaze drifted further down the beach, slowly scanning the horizon. The sun was just starting to set over the ocean, giving the scene a false sense of romance.

"You were writing for most of the flight. I remember, because at one point I looked up and wondered how in the world one person could write for five hours non-stop," He chuckled half-heartedly and Sam forced a smile. "What were you writing about?" He asked as he unscrewed the lid of the vodka bottle.

"I was writing a letter," Sam murmured, watching the Asian woman she'd helped earlier tightly embrace an Asian man. Briefly she wondered if they were married, running the tip of her index finger over her bare ring finger subconsciously as she watched.

"Ah." He grunted. "That's pretty cool. Not a lot of people actually write letters anymore. Was it anything important?" He asked as a sharp pain ignited in her side. She cried out before quickly stuffing the heel of her palm into her mouth. The pain quickly subsided, and people around them were already looking away when Sam forced her eyes open again.

"N-_no_," She hissed as he quickly shoved the tip of the needle through her skin. She gritted her teeth and tried to focus on the feel of his left hand, warm and steady, holding a firm grip on her shoulder. "I was just trying to get my thoughts straight."

He grunted. "So you write to help you sort out your emotions. That's a very intellectual thing to do. I usually end up either punching something or drinking to sort out mine."

Sam chucked shakily. "I used to do that. But then I broke my hand, so I figured I would find a less violent way or releasing every_thing_," She gasped at a particularly hard tug. "Jesus Christ," She whimpered.

"Almost there. So, Sam, how old are you?" Mark asked.

She felt a deep-rooted defensiveness kick in, urging her to deflect any and all personal questions away from herself, but a rational part of her mind assured her that Mark was only asking to distract her from the pain. "Twenty-six," She gasped. "I just turned twenty-six last month."

"Well happy belated birthday," Mark murmured. "Sorry my gift is kind of shitty. You'll thank me later, though, I swear,"

"I'm having a hard time believing you," Sam grumbled. She rolled her eyes as he chuckled.

"Okay, let me tie it off and cut off the excess," Mark said a few moments later. Sam contented herself to study the people trotting down the beach, most of them still clearly in shock. A rather tall, blonde, model-esque woman was sprawled out in the sand, sobbing, and a man who Sam thought might be the woman's brother or cousin trying in vain to comfort her. The man Sam pulled away from the engine earlier was watching the crying woman as well from the woman's other side; just as Sam was about to look away, he made eye-contact with her.

"There. Done. Now, I know this might be asking a lot considering we don't know how long it'll be before we get rescued, but please try not to put too much of a strain on it, okay? Try to take it easy until they get to us," Mark packed the sewing supplies away and tucked it into his pocket, before standing and smiling. His teeth were perfectly straight and blindingly white.

She nodded and he trudged away, leaving his jacket forgotten in the sand. As he passed before her, she was afforded a glimpse of the man she'd saved picking his way toward her. He was almost in ear-shot when the broken wing of the plane finally snapped and hit the ground in a thunderous, earth-shaking explosion of sound.

A fresh wave of panic washed through the survivors around her, the sobs of the blonde woman renewed. The man was still staring back at the newly settled wreckage as he stumbled over to her side.

"Bloody hell," He muttered under his breath. Sam raised a thin eyebrow at him, at which he grinned. "Sorry. Bet you think that's the only thing I ever say."

She did not respond, still squinting up at him. His eyes were a curiously bright blue, almost as bright as Danny's, but they sparked and twinkled in a cheerful way. Not like Danny's. His rosy lips parted to reveal slightly crooked, not-quite-white teeth. The skin on his face and neck was tan and smooth, scarcely interrupted with any wounds bearing witness to the crash they miraculously survived. His British - _or is it Australian?_ - accent was light and almost bubbly, and his face was creased with laugh lines.

"D'you mind if I sit?" He asked, gesturing to the patch of sand on her left. She shook her head and pointed to the ground, which he immediately occupied. "I'm Cedric, by the way. But everyone calls me Ced."

"Sam," She took his outstretched hand and shook it, only just then noticing that two of her knuckles were split.

"Well, it's a hell of a circumstance, but it's still nice to meet you, Sam." He flashed her another grin. "Saw that doctor bloke tending your side. Are you alright?"

_Like he can't see the giant bloodstain on my shirt_, she thought rather savagely. "Yeah. Just stitches," She muttered, turning her gaze toward the horizon. From the corner of her eye, she could see him nod.

"Thanks for pulling me out of there earlier. I reckon I was getting a bit carried away. I probably wouldn't have gotten away in time if you hadn't dragged me out."

"S'no problem," She sighed.

"Sorry, am I bothering you? I kind of talk a bit when I'm nervous and it really hacks some people off. If I'm annoying you just tell me, I swear I won't get offended or anything, I - "

"Ced!" Sam gripped his shoulder and squeezed, silencing him instantly. "You're not annoying me. I just don't really talk a lot."

"Oh," His eyes were glued to her hand as she withdrew it; he did not speak again until well after she'd carefully folded it on her lap. "Well, yeah. I'm Ced. Thanks for saving me. So is Sam short for something?"

"Samantha," She could feel herself snarling around the name, secretly pleased that her full name still irritated her.

"I take it you don't particularly like that name?" She shook her head and he laughed. "Why not? I think it's a fine name."

"Thanks, but it's not really my personality." She turned her head slightly as the sun began to dip below the horizon. "We should build a fire. It'll be dark soon."

Three hours later, Sam, Ced, and a group of other survivors gathered enough firewood to start three medium-sized blazes across the beach. No one seemed particularly partial to being anywhere near the fuse-lodge, where several unlucky people still hung limply in their seats, so they managed to clear away enough wreckage for the survivors to gather in groups around fires. Sam sat in the group furthest away from the fuse-lodge, her back to the wreckage, with Ced on her right.

"So you're from the States?" Ced asked her quietly. Conversations were buzzing all around them, but the atmosphere was subdued. The enormity of the situation settled across them like a thick blanket of snow.

"Uh, yeah," Sam said distractedly.

"What were you doing in Australia?" Ced asked, shifting a little in the sand. Sam clenched her jaw and swallowed hard against a wave of annoyance with him. _He's just making conversation_.

"I've lived there for four years," She said, gaze fixated on the fire.

"Oh, really? Okay, what were you doing going to the States?"

"I needed to make sure I made the right decision when I moved to Australia."

"Well...d'you have an idea?" She turned her head and stared at him sideways. "I mean d'you have an idea about whether or not it was the right decision to move?"

She sighed. "I don't know. I've been on the fence for a while, now," the words tasted bitter in her mouth. The wind was blowing the smoke almost directly into her face. "I'm just not sure." She stood and stretched. "I'm gonna move to another fire, this one's a little too smoky for me."

She turned toward the forest, eyes on the second fire just a few short yards away, but before she could take a step forward a dazzling flash of red light ignited the night air around her. Gasps rippled through the band of survivors, every eye on the beacon of light shining up from somewhere further into the island. She felt more than heard or saw the other survivors standing to get a better look at it.

"What the hell is _that_?" She heard Mark mutter from somewhere behind her.

A piercing shriek deafened her before she could hear anyone answer. She grimaced and slapped her hands over her ears, but it made little difference. Chills raced down her spine and the hairs on the back of her neck and on her arms stood on end, goose bumps erupting across her skin in an internal earthquake. Just when she was beginning to think that the sound would never end, an unsettling silence set across the camp. The sound was over as suddenly as it began.

When she opened her eyes, the light was gone. Her hands slid away from her face slowly, gaze still fixated on the empty place in the sky previously inhabited by the beacon of light. She swallowed thickly.

There was something unsettlingly familiar about that shriek.

* * *

**Uh...oh...**

**- Tori**


	2. Chapter 2

**Ah! Yay! You guys like it so far (:**

**I'm really excited for this one. I do wanna let you guys know, though, that I'm only going to update this when I am completely happy with the chapter. I feel like with Wide Awake I would update because I felt pressured to. I want this to be the best one yet, so I'm gonna take my time and make sure what I post is quality.**

**But like I promised in Wide Awake, I _will not_ abandon this. I will finish it. That's a promise.**

**Okay. I don't own Danny Phantom or Lost. (:**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

**Tabula Rasa**

**Chapter Two**

**February 24, 2014**

* * *

"Sam?" She did not move at the sound of her name. She could sense Dex standing behind her, at the opposite end of the hall, but she was far too absorbed in the previously white canvas set up on the easel before her to turn and look at him.

"Hm?" She hummed absently, arm curving up in an arc toward the top of the image.

"It's for you," She paused and blinked, trying to make sense of the statement. "The _phone_, Sam." His voice was harsher now, his words sharper. _Oh right_, she thought. _The phone just rang_.

Sam eased her pallet down on the table beside her and reached backwards for the phone, refusing to turn her head to meet his gaze. She heard him sigh impatiently, so loudly it was almost a growl, before the phone was thrust into her hand. They were the last people she knew who still had a landline. Sometimes she wondered exactly how far behind she was with the rest of the world when it came to technology. Tucker almost cried the last time he came to visit.

"Hello?" Her voice sounded strange. Dreamy. She always sounded that way when she was in the middle of a painting.

"Uh...um...Sam?"

"Speaking."

"Sorry, you just…you sound…different," The voice on the other end of the line exhaled. "Sam, it's...i-it's Danny."

She felt her heart freeze in her chest. Ice quickly spread through her veins, rooting her to the spot. "Danny?" She whispered the name as if it was a sacred prayer.

"Yeah," He laughed awkwardly, almost desperately, as if he was trying to convince himself that this phone call was warranted after not speaking to her more than three years.

She tried to speak, tried to ask him what he wanted, why he was calling her, when did he get that phone number, but the words would not come out. Instead she stood very still with her mouth hanging open. Her jaw twitched. "Look, I'm sorry that I'm calling you at home. I didn't...y'know, I don't want to...intrude."

"It's okay," She heard herself breathe.

"Your grandma gave me the number,"_ That explains it_, she thought. She could practically feel him blushing thousands of miles away. "I promise I won't call you ever again...I just need to talk to you for a minute. I..." He sighed. "I miss you."

She bit her lip. "What do you want, Danny?"

"I saw your wedding invitation. Tucker tried to hide it from me, but...I found it. It's not his fault, I was snooping. I wanted to...congratulate...you," It sounded like he was choking down bile as he said it, like the words were poison in his mouth. "You look happy in the pictures."

"Thank you," She whispered.

"I know...back when you first left...I know I screwed up. And I feel _terrible_ about it." She closed her eyes, willing the memories to disappear. "You've gotta know that my behavior back then is my biggest regret in life so far. Well, it's my second-biggest regret in life so far." His voice was low and rough. She imagined him sitting in the corner of his bedroom, curled up in the shadows, one hand in his hair and the other clutching his phone - the way she had seen him sit so many times before. "My biggest regret is losing you."

"Danny, I can't listen to this," She almost whimpered the words. She gritted her teeth and lifted her chin. "I'm getting married in a month, okay? I love him, and he loves me."

"I know. That's why I'm calling you. When I saw the invitation I realized that what you have with him is real. And I'm almost ready to accept that. Almost." He took a deep, shuddering breath. "I'm still in love with you, though, and I think part of you is still in love with me." She remained silent. "There's a flight from Sydney to New York on Thursday morning. I'll be waiting in New York when that flight lands. Just...just come see me. Come back home and...if it feels wrong, then...I won't fight you. I'll let you go back to Sydney and I'll never bother you again, I swear."

"I-I..." Her surroundings were little more than a blur. She felt her free hand flutter around her hip. "I don't know..."

"You don't have to decide right now. Just think about it. I'll be waiting for you in New York, and if you don't get off the plane...I'll know your answer."

"It doesn't mean I've forgiven you," She whispered. "If I come, I mean. It won't mean you'll have another chance."

"I know," He said quietly. "I'm not the only one who misses you, you know," She clenched her jaw. "Just think about it. Please."

"Who was that?" Dex asked as Sam dropped the phone. She hardly glanced at where he sat on the couch to her left, not that he noticed; he was far too absorbed in the television to actually care. He hadn't heard any of the conversation.

"An old friend." She said quietly.

* * *

"Sam?" An unfamiliar voice broke through the haze of her dream. She groaned before she could stop herself, unaccustomed to such harsh lighting so early in the morning. For a moment she forgot; her mind was convinced that she was curled up in the bed she shared with Dex, blankets kicked to the end of the bed the way they always ended up after a full night's rest. Maybe she had forgotten to close the curtains to the huge bay window in the bedroom the night before, maybe that's why the light was so bright. Or maybe Dex opened them before he left for work; he always liked the morning light when he got dressed, regardless of Sam's hatred of it. "Sam, wake up," The hand jostling her arm was large and warm and the voice was comforting; definitely not Dex's voice. It was almost like a doctor's voice.

Her eyes snapped open and she gasped, inhaling a large amount of sand in the process. She was not curled up in her bed in Sydney; she was sprawled out on her side on an unfamiliar beach, near the smoldering remains of the fire from the night before. Mark was crouched beside her, shielding his eyes from the reflection of the sun in the ocean beside them. "Whoa, take it easy," She could barely hear his words over her heaving coughs. He helped her into a sitting position, his hand rubbing firm circles against her back as she coughed violently.

"Wh-what...happened?" She managed to choke a few moments later. Tears were beginning to gather in her eyes.

"Nothing," He shook his head and smiled slightly, but she could see he was as exhausted as she was. "I just didn't want you to stay out here too long and risk sunburn and dehydration,"

She glanced down her side and squinted at the rosy quality of the skin over her arm. "I think it's a little late for the sunburn thing," She muttered, smiling in spite of herself when Mark snorted.

"I actually _did_ want to ask you something," He said as they trudged up the beach. "A few of us are planning on going further into the island to look for fresh water, and I wanted to see if you want to go with us."

"Who's going?" She asked, studying the survivors clumped together near the tree line. A tall man with dirty blonde hair was watching them.

"Me, Ced, and Gwen so far." He ticked the names off on his fingers as they walked, oblivious to the gaze of the blonde man on his face. "You, too, if you agree to come."

"I haven't met Gwen."

"She's over there," He pointed toward the woman with curly brown hair, whom Sam helped carry the Asian woman the day before. She was standing away from the group, facing the ocean. Her eyes were closed. "You know who Ced is?"

"Yeah, the British guy," Mark nodded. "Okay. Were you gonna ask anyone else?"

"I don't think so," He shrugged, glancing over his shoulder at the group. "We need to keep as many people on the beach as possible. They'll be looking for survivors near the wreckage and I don't want them to miss us just because we're all further in the island."

"That makes sense." She murmured. "They haven't seen anything yet?"

"No," He almost sounded sad. "But it's only been a little over twelve hours. We just need to be patient, you know?"

"Yeah…it's just…I don't know. An international flight doesn't show up at its gate…I would think that would be a bit of a red flag for the airport." Mark's gaze fell to the sand between them. "But maybe when we crashed, we were off-course. Maybe they're looking for us in the wrong place right now."

"Did you have family waiting for you after the flight?" Mark asked, peering up at her through his lashes.

"Not exactly. Only one person knew I was coming. Well, I say he knew…the last time we talked, I told him I wasn't sure if I was going or not. So there's a chance he thinks I just didn't come."

"Was he waiting for you at the airport, though?"

"He said he would be waiting."

"Maybe they've figured it out, then. No one knew I was coming back from Sydney, either. Actually, no one knew I was in Sydney to begin with."

They were slowly picking their way down the beach again, heading toward Gwen. Ced was busily chatting with the Asian couple, whose faces were far too blank to reflect any kind of understanding. Ced appeared not to notice.

"If you don't mind me asking…what were you doing in Sydney?"

"Visiting family," He said it nonchalantly, but Sam could tell there was far more to the story than he was letting on to. "What about you?"

"I've lived there with my fiancé for four years."

"Oh, God," He stopped walking in the sand, his face crumpled with anguish. "Don't worry, you'll see him again, we'll -"

"No, it's okay," She shook her head quickly. "He…he's actually my…uh…I guess he's my ex-fiancé. I don't know. I left in the middle of a fight, and I…kind of…well, I left the ring behind."

He nodded slowly in understanding. "He didn't know where you were going?"

"Nope."

"Do you regret it?"

"No. At least, not yet."

The corner of his mouth pulled up, revealing a dimple in his chin. "Good. Let's go get some water."

"So I was thinking," Ced bounded up behind them and threw an arm around their necks, oblivious to Sam's grimace at the motion jostling her injured side. "We're going into the woods, right?"

"That's the plan, Ced." Mark said, a note of disapproval in his voice.

"What if we find the monster that made the red light last night?"

"Monster?" Sam repeated, unable to keep her scoffing tone in check. She felt her toes curl in her boots and the muscles in her neck stiffen, but the reaction she expected did not come. Instead, Ced cocked an eyebrow in question. "What makes you think a monster made the light?" She asked carefully.

"Did you not hear that siren screaming sound? You wanna tell me a _human_ made that sound?"

"It kind of sounded like a ghostly wail." Sam shrugged his arm off of her shoulder and plodded ahead of the boys. She saw Ced drop his arm from around Mark's neck from the corner of her eye. "But if it is a ghost, I guess we're both right."

"Ghost?" Ced's voice suddenly sounded remarkably similar to Sam's. "There's no such thing as ghosts."

"There's such a thing as monsters?" Sam tossed over her shoulder. They were within earshot of Gwen by then; the girl was watching them approach with a small, tired smile. "Trust me. I grew up in the most haunted city in America. There's such a thing as ghosts, and that's definitely what caused the light and the sound last night."

"I'll bet you five dollars it's a werewolf calling for a mate." Ced was digging through his pockets with his tongue between his lips. "Hold on, where's…you've gotta be…" He turned around and stared after his footsteps. "I've lost my wallet!"

"Ced. Focus. We've got bigger problems." Mark said sternly.

"But -"

"Water or wallet?"

Ced set his jaw and sighed. "Fine. Let's go get some dumb water."

"I'm Sam, by the way," Sam reached forward and shook Gwen's hand.

"Gwen. Thanks for helping me yesterday, I wouldn't have been able to get her out of there on my own."

"Yeah, no problem."

"Um…does anyone else notice the blonde bloke staring at us?" Charlie muttered. Sam raised her head slightly and spotted the same man from before. He had migrated through the group and was now standing on the outermost edges, still watching them carefully. He straightened when the four of them met his gaze.

"What're you guys doing?" He called with a warm southern twang as he sloped down the beach. He walked as if he owned the place; as if he was a king working his swagger through a parade in his honor.

"We're gonna try to find some water," Mark said carefully. Sam could see the muscles in Mark's forearm tightening, his hands forming fists. She clenched her jaw. "What's your name?"

"Jesse." Jesse surveyed their group carefully, blue eyes lingering on Sam and Gwen, before coming back to Mark. "You sure taking _ladies_ into the woods is a good idea?"

"They did a hell of a lot more than most of the guys yesterday after the crash," Mark said. Sam felt a burst of warmth in her chest toward the man she barely knew who defended her now.

Jesse raised his hands to his chest and showed them his palms. "Hey, I don't mean any harm," He said, though Sam detected a glint of something a little more sinister than mischievous in his eyes. "I'm just curious, that's all."

"Well, we need to get going before it gets too hot," Mark shouldered past Jesse and gestured for the others to follow. He was wearing a large backpack that looked as though it was about to burst; as Ced moved past Jesse, Sam noticed he was wearing a backpack as well.

"Mind if I tag along?"

"I think it'd be better if you stay here with the group. You know, keep an eye out for rescue boats or planes or anything like that."

"See, the thing is, I'm not real good with waiting around."

Sam nearly ran into Mark's back as he froze in the sand. He turned slowly, and she saw a real, righteous anger in his dark eyes. "Wait here." He spat at Jesse, before turning back toward the woods.

"What was that about?" Gwen asked when they were far enough into the woods to not be heard.

"Nothing," Mark muttered.

"Didn't seem like nothing," Ced commented, carefully averting his gaze when Mark shot him a glare.

"Yeah, it kind of seemed like you know him."

"Can we stop talking about it? Please?" Mark shook his head and shoved his way through a few low-hanging branches. "He's nothing. He's no one. Let's keep moving."

They walked in silence, Mark leading the way while Sam, Ced, and Gwen shared awkward glances every few minutes. Sam watched the tension slowly leave Mark's shoulders and back; after a while, his arms started swinging at his sides.

"Keep an eye out for moss and an ear out for running water," He called over his shoulder. They were scaling a gentle slope up a rather grassy hill; Ced had to grab Sam's hand and haul her up a small drop-off, as her make-shift stitches would not allow her to bend that way by herself. The trees grew closer together the further into the woods they got; eventually it became a challenge to weave through the trunks without getting their feet caught in the entwined roots.

"Hey…guys?" Gwen's voice rang through the relative quiet of the woods. A few birds perched on branches overhead squawked indignantly at the interruption. "I think I found something…"

Sam carefully picked her way over the roots she had just crossed, falling back to where Gwen was crouching. Ced took her hand and helped her keep her balance, and she could feel the heat of Mark's hand radiating above her shoulder, ready to catch her should she slip.

"Is it moss?" Mark asked excitedly.

"Not exactly," There was something thin and black laying across her palm, stretching well past either side of her hand, draping all the way to the forest floor. Sam had to stare at it for several minutes before realizing she was staring at an electrical cord.

"What is it?" Ced asked.

"It's an extension cord." Mark said slowly.

"What would an extension cord be doing in the middle of the woods on a deserted island?"

"I don't…I don't know," Mark murmured.

"You know what this means, right?" Gwen's tone was hushed and oozing with fear.

"We're not the only people on this island." Sam breathed.

* * *

**Okay so usually I hate fics that have Sam engaged/married to someone else, but...idk, it just happened with this one. If that's a turnoff for you, I'm sorry. ):**

**(However please notice that this is coded as DxS, not OCxS. JUST SAYIN')**

**Okie dokie. I hope you guys liked it (:**

**Next chapter is currently about half-written. I estimate it'll be up by this weekend, but I am NOT making any promises.**

**Thanks for reading!**

**- Tori**


	3. Chapter 3

**Okay, I'm updating a little early today so that I can spend the weekend working on other projects. I intend to update a few other projects on this profile, as well as working on a few personal pieces. Actually, I might be able to get chapter 4 up for this one! It's a little more than half-way written right now, but I don't know if I'll get it done. Eh. We'll see.**

**I do wanna mention really quickly that I have a link to my Tumblr account in my bio, so if you're interested, you should definitely check me out. And maybe help me get a better theme or something. (:**

**Okay! I don't own Danny Phantom, Lost, or anything else you recognize.**

**Enjoy! (:**

* * *

**Wide Awake**

**Chapter Three**

**February 27, 2014**

* * *

Sam woke slowly that morning. Light trickled through the closed curtains of her bedroom, but it hardly bothered her. What bothered her was the insufferable heat she was currently cocooned in. With a huff of annoyance, she flipped her thick comforter down over her hips, just to find something was blocking the right side of the comforter, causing it to remain in position.

She turned and inhaled sharply. Dex was there. His blonde hair hung down over his eyes, moving every time a breath puffed past his swollen pink lips. She furrowed her brow, trying to remember when Dex said he was going to stay the night. _Did we…?_ She lifted the sheets slightly before slapping them back down to her chest. _Yep, I'm definitely naked right now._

_Oh God…oh shit…what have I done?_ She pressed her hand to her forehead, suddenly feeling feverish. _I've lived in Australia for four months and I've already managed to sleep with my _only_ friend. Great. Perfect. Way to go, Manson._

Dex sighed in his sleep and burrowed down further beneath the comforter, tugging it up so that it was nearly over his chin. She grimaced at his sleeping face. Memories were slowly returning to her, though they were hazy with the fog of alcohol. _I told him to not give me any more, and what did he do?_

_He poured another round of shots._

_ This is _his_ fault._ She felt the savage protectiveness she'd developed come tearing out of its' cave deep in her mind. _He knows how I get when I have too much to drink. It's his fault, even if I came on to him. He's the one who let me get so drunk that I couldn't make a rational decision._

_ Right?_

_ I need to talk to Tucker._

She rolled out of bed and seized the first article of clothing she could find, which happened to be an extra-large t-shirt that once belonged to her father, draped over the back of her computer chair. It fell to about half-way down her thighs. She tried not to look down at the carpet of clothing layering her floor; she did not want to see the physical evidence of the foreplay. She did not want to see evidence of any of it, actually.

The sight of the empty wine glasses, whiskey glasses, and shot glasses littering her coffee table nearly made her retch. She gripped the door frame tightly and closed her eyes, waiting for it to pass. When she was finally able to open her eyes again, she kept them carefully trained on the floor, glancing up only to seek her phone out on the couch before skittering to the front of her house.

It was still on half-battery, thank God. The clock read just past 10 o'clock in the morning, meaning it was just past five o'clock in the afternoon in Illinois. _Perfect,_ she thought. _He should be out of work right now._

"This is weird, I was gonna call you later. I've been worried about you," Sam's heart ached at the sound of Tucker's voice when he answered after the first two rings; she missed him more than anyone else she left behind. "Is everything okay?"

"Y-yeah," She exhaled shakily, desperately trying to keep her voice quiet enough to avoid waking Dex. "I just…you know…"

"I miss you, too, Sam," She heard him sigh. Tears flooded her vision and she had to blink rapidly to keep them from spilling over.

She laughed shakily. "How's work?"

"It's work. How's Australia?"

"It's Australia," She picked at the edge of her curtains.

"What's wrong?"

"Noth-"

"Sam, I know you better than anyone. I know something's wrong with you. What's going on?"

"I…" She exhaled again, and this time she could not keep the tears from flowing. "I screwed up."

"What happened?"

"I…think I slept with Dex last night,"

Silence followed her statement. She held very still, refusing to breathe. She could hear the distant sounds of traffic from his end of the line; he was sitting in rush hour, she was sure. "You _think_?" Tucker repeated.

"I mean…we were drinking…I don't really remember much, to be honest," She swallowed. "All I know for sure is that I woke up in bed with him this morning and I wasn't wearing any clothes."

"Seems like evidence enough. So…I'm sorry, but…I'm failing to see how this is a problem for you. Last I heard, you were into him."

"He's my only friend here! What if this messes everything up, what if he thinks I'm a slut now and doesn't want to be around me…or worse, what if he thinks I'm a booty call?"

"If he starts treating you like a booty call, you let me know. I'll be down there in two minutes flat and I'll kick his ass so hard he'll wish he'd never even met you."

"You're awful."

"Is that the only reason this is an issue for you?"

Sam seized a fistful of the curtain and squeezed. "It's a big part of it," She said weakly.

"Are you sure it has nothing to do with you-know-who?" It was her turn to fall silent. "Because if it is…if you feel guilty over _him_…if you feel like _you_ betrayed _him_…I'm gonna come over there and kick _your _ass."

Her laugh was choked and watery. "I can't help it, Tuck," She murmured. She wanted to bury her face in the curtains. "I dated the guy for seven years. It's been four months since we broke up. It's gonna take a while for my thinking pattern to adjust."

"Has he called you anymore?"

"He'll call me every now and then. But it's only if he's drunk now, and he only leaves messages. If I answer, he hangs up on me."

"At least it's an improvement."

"Have you seen him?"

"Not since a few days after that night. I've tried, but Jazz says he doesn't wanna see me."

"Why wouldn't he want to see you?"

"He blames me. He says it's my fault you left, that I was the one who suggested you move half-way around the world to hide from him. And...let's be real, I'm not too torn up about it at this point."

"He's an idiot."

"Well, I did suggest you move to hide from him for a while. What was I supposed to do? He was getting dangerous."

"He's not anymore?"

"Jazz made it seem like he's starting to realize he's why you left. She made it sound like he's trying to improve so that you'll come back." The thought of returning home sent a jolt of excitement through her system; her fingers tightened around the curtain. "But I made it clear that you weren't coming back until _you_ wanted to."

"You're the best." She murmured. "I should have packed you when I was moving out."

"You almost did." He chuckled. "Listen, I gotta go. There's a wreck up ahead, traffic's creeping by. I'll call you in a couple hours, okay?"

"Okay."

"Let me know how it goes. Is Dex still over there?"

As if on cue, shuffling footsteps echoed down the hall, coming closer all the time. "Uh, yeah," She said. "I'll talk to you later."

* * *

"Who the hell else would be here?" Ced demanded. "Why wouldn't they come down to the beach after that crash?"

"It could just be part of the plane," Gwen offered quietly.

"Look at the way the roots have started growing around it," Sam pointed. "It's been here for a long time. Years, maybe. That's not part of a plane that crashed here yesterday."

"But that doesn't mean that there's someone else here," Mark said rationally. "It could be something left over from a science expedition from years ago. There's no telling how long it's been here. Whoever laid it could be long gone."

"I don't know…" Sam said slowly. "It just seems a little odd, don't you think? The light and the siren from last night, now this cord…it just seems like a hell of a coincidence, that's all I'm saying."

"I've felt like we've been watched since the moment we got here," Gwen whispered, glancing over her shoulder as she spoke. "Like there's something out here in the woods that's watching all of us."

Sam felt Ced shuffle closer to where she crouched. "I doubt anyone's watching us," Sam said calmly, ignoring the prickle on the back of her neck. "I think we're all still in shock from the crash. It's not every day people survive plane crashes on a deserted island."

"_Possibly_ deserted island," Ced corrected. Sam shot him a dirty look over her shoulder.

"D'you think we should follow it?" Gwen asked, her tone hushed and reverent.

They all turned to Mark, who had a hand on his chin and was gazing down at the cord thoughtfully. "It's only gonna get hotter the longer we stay out here," He said after a moment of silence. "I think for right now we should focus on finding fresh water for everyone. Maybe after the sun starts to set and the temperature drops a little, we can come back and follow this thing. See what we find, you know?"

"What if we can't find it again later?"

Sam stood and peeled her flannel shirt off, only just then noticing that she was sweating profusely. "We'll just look for this later," She said, tying one of the sleeves around a low branch so that it was dangling almost directly over the cord. "Try to pull a little slack up so that it's easier to spot."

The girls straightened. They stood there for a moment longer, watching the breeze that managed to snake between the tree trunks caress the flannel shirt and force it to sway slightly, before turning and starting back in the direction they were originally heading in.

"Did anyone count how many survivors there are back at camp?" Ced asked as they picked through the roots.

"Close to fifty," Mark said. "I've got enough empty water bottles in the backpacks to give everyone two."

"Wait…this thing is full of empty water bottles?" Ced swung his backpack around and unzipped the first zipper. "That means it'll be fifty times heavier on the trip back!"

"I can hold it on the way back, if you want," Gwen offered. Ced grimaced.

"I can't make you take it, what kind of man would I be to force a woman to carry such a heavy thing back?"

"Um, a sexist one," Gwen said sharply. "Women are just as capable of physical labor as men are. Right, Sam?"

"Just let him carry it back," Sam said quietly. "It'll shut him up."

"But that makes us look weak!" Gwen protested.

"Only to them."

"It's that kind of mentality in women that's causing the decline in feminism! We can't afford to think like that, we're still struggling as an entire gender -"

"Gwen, trust me. I'm all for women's rights. But you've gotta learn to pick your fights about these things. Carrying a heavy backpack back to camp won't prove anything. It won't change the world. Just let Ced carry the bag."

She could feel Gwen's glare on her face, and Mark's curious stare over his shoulder tempted her gaze upward, but she kept her eyes focused on the uneven ground beneath her feet. It was very quiet after that.

Ced heard the river before the other three. "It's over this way!" He said excitedly, jumping over a thick patch of undergrowth before reaching back to help Sam. The river ran parallel to their path for about ten yards before gracefully curving away, toward what Sam assumed was the center of the island. The water was crystal clear and Mark groaned when he brought a handful of it to his lips.

"That's definitely fresh water," He was panting as he scooped more up and splashed it over his face. Sam fell to her knees beside him, Gwen falling on her other side, and for several minutes the only sound between them was slurping, splashing, and panting.

Sam fell backwards so that she was sitting on the gravelly river bank and propped herself up with her arms extended behind her. "I didn't even notice how thirsty I was," She sighed. Her belly was full and sloshing slightly, and her hair was plastered to her forehead beneath rivulets of water running down her face.

"You'd be surprised at how fast a human body can dehydrate," Mark said conversationally, unscrewing the lid of an empty water bottle he pulled from the open backpack beside him. "I know that scientifically speaking you can go three to five days without water, but in an environment like this, it could be as fast as a few hours. Especially if the person's over-exerted themselves, by, oh I don't know, dragging people away from a plane wreck?" He replaced the lid and pulled another bottle out. "It's an incredibly dangerous environment."

"Not to put a damper on this little success," Ced murmured as he filled a water bottle, "but what are we gonna do about food? Water's great and all, but eventually people are gonna be starving,"

"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it," Mark said firmly. "I'm hoping we won't be here long enough to have to worry about that."

"I'm an ultra-recyclo vegetarian," Sam offered. The statement was met with blank faces; she sighed. "It's a form of veganism. I know what's edible out here and what isn't. If it comes down to it, I can find stuff for us to eat."

"Perfect," Mark gestured to Sam, raising his eyebrows at Ced. "Sam can take care of us."

A little over two hours later, the four finally broke through the trees on the beach. The survivors sat right on the edge between the sand and the trees, where the shade offered some shelter, in small groups. Jesse was standing almost in the water; his jeans were rolled up so that the waves slithered over his ankles without wetting his clothes.

"We found water!" Mark announced. Cheers rippled through the group as the boys unzipped their backpacks and began passing water bottles to outstretched hands. Sam watched with a small smile until she felt something touch her shoulder.

"I'm sorry if I came off a little bitchy in the woods," Gwen said softly, eyes wide and apologetic. "I just…my dad was abusive to my mom, so…it pisses me off when men act like they're better than women."

"It's okay. I used to be like you. I understand where you're coming from."

"What do you mean, you _used_ to be like me? What made you change?"

Sam opened her mouth to respond, but hesitated. "It's complicated," She said finally. "A lot of things happened and…I just realized…I don't know. It's just how things are gonna be. There's not a lot I can do to change it."

"But there _is_," Gwen said urgently. "You don't have to be a victim. You can _do_ something, you can _change_ things…" She touched Sam's arm gently. "Have you been abused?"

Anger exploded through Sam's chest. "No," She spat, ripping her arm out from beneath Gwen's touch. "And even if I have, it's none of your business."

"I'm just trying to h-"

"Well, stop." Sam snarled. "I don't need your help. I don't need _anyone's_ help."

Without waiting for Gwen to respond, Sam turned on her heel and stormed further down the beach. She could feel Ced watching her departure, his head turned toward her while he held his backpack open for the other survivors, but she ignored him and headed for the trees.

She was about six feet away from the tree line when the bushes began to shake. She froze, eyes glued to the swaying branches. Before she could take a step backwards, a terrible roar burst through the sounds of the beach and the bushes were ripped out of place. Sam had just enough time to process a blur of sickly green skin before she stumbled backwards, sprawling out in the sand. She felt her stitches stretch and protest the movement, but that did not stop her from scrambling backwards.

They were at least seven feet tall, with the head of a boar and the body of a seasoned body-builder. Their black tusks were as long as Sam's forearm, curving up around their mouths and glistening in the sunlight. Their eyes were red and pupil-less.

There were three, three identical beasts, three identical glares, three identical snarls.

"_Sam_!" a male voice screamed.

* * *

**Yeah...so...I've got chapter four a little more than half-written, remember...I might be able to get it posted before the weekend is over...maybe (:**

**Thanks for reading! (:**

**- Tori**


	4. Chapter 4

**Got it done! But only because my classes got cancelled today. Lol.**

**Hmm...you guys are funny. Hopefully this chapter might provide a little bit more info as to who's on the island/what's going on on the island.**

**But, then again, it might confuse you guys even more.**

**We'll see!**

**I think that's pretty much it, for now.**

**I don't own Danny Phantom.**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

**Tabula Rasa**

**Chapter Four**

**March 3, 2014**

* * *

"D'you know what today is?"

Sam paused in the midst of stirring her tea, peering up through her lashes across the table at Dex. He was leaning forward, elbows on the table, looking supremely excited.

She leaned back, carefully tapping the spoon against the side of her glass so that tea would not get all over the table before their food arrived. "Um…Thursday?" She guessed, unable to keep her playful smile off of her face.

Dex tossed his head back and laughed. The dimmed lights overhead provided a warm ambience, echoed by the light dusting of freckles over his cheeks and nose and the merry twinkle in his green eyes. "Yes, but that's not exactly the answer I'm looking for, here,"

"Okay…help me out," she prompted him. "What's today?"

"It's October seventh," he smiled triumphantly. "You've been living here for over a year now."

"Wow," Sam nodded slowly, a myriad of memories flashing through her mind. She forced them away and pasted a smile on her face. "I have, haven't I?"

"Mhmm," he hummed. "See the bar over there?"

"Dex, we eat at this restaurant almost every week. I _know_ where the bar is,"

"Do you see it?" He persisted, pointing across their table. Sam sighed good-naturedly and turned to where he was pointing. A small mob of people currently hid most of the actual bar, though she caught glimpses of the dull wooden surface when women with desperate facial expressions leaned forward toward their equally desperate suitors.

"Okay, I see it," she laughed and turned back to him to find him watching her with a soft, adoring smile. She inhaled sharply at the look. "Why am I looking at the bar?"

"Because exactly one year ago, today, I saw you standing over there by yourself." He pointed over her shoulder again, but Sam did not turn. "I was sitting right here, at this table, and I think I stared at you for a good ten minutes before I finally got the courage up to go talk to you."

"And then I wowed you with my creepily extensive knowledge of ghosts," she laughed, a little desperate to diffuse the sudden intensity of their conversation. "I still haven't found a good use for _any_ of that crap," she added as an after-thought.

He did not appear to hear her. "It was the first time I'd ever laid eyes on you," his gaze was smoldering. "You were the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen."

"Dex," she said softly.

"Just let me finish," He urged her. "You were the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen…and you still are," he stretched his arm across the table and took her hand in his. "You are _so_ beautiful, Sam."

"Dex…" She tried to pull her hand from his grasp, but his grip remained firm. The restaurant suddenly felt very hot. "We said we would be friends. _Just_ friends."

"I know what I said," He muttered.

"We both agreed, that night was a mistake, a one-time -"

"I _know _what I _said_!" The tables around them fell quiet. Sam dropped her gaze to their hands still joined over the table to avoid the curious looks from those around their table. He exhaled noisily through his nose when the patrons around them seemed to return to their meals. "I just…I…I haven't been able to stop thinking about you since that night. Since the first second I saw you, actually," her heart was pounding uncomfortably fast in her chest. "I know you don't want a relationship. I'm okay with taking things slow. But…I can't stay 'just friends' with you for another second. I…well, honestly, I think I'm falling in love with you."

* * *

"_Sam!_" A male voice screamed over the sounds of sudden chaos behind her. Sam could not draw her eyes away from the beasts. The one in the lead was glaring down at her, saliva dripping from its bared teeth and a demonic growl sliding up its throat. She was still scrambling backwards, but the sand slipping through her grasping fingers made it impossible to get very far.

Hands seized her upper arms and hoisted her up. She allowed herself to be swept away, still staring after the creature as it tilted its head up and howled. Without any further pretense, the three beasts charged after her.

A loud _pop_ followed by a high-pitched squeal brought her saviors to a stumbling halt. The creature in the middle, the one that seemed to lead the other two, fell forward on the sand and twitched. The other two stopped, kicking at their now motionless leader, before turning their gazes to each other. An unspoken agreement passed between them; with one last lethal glare at the group, they cantered into the safety of the trees.

For a moment, all Sam could do was pant. She stared after the creatures, watching the place where they disappeared, almost expecting a swarm of them to come pouring back out onto the beach. But after about thirty seconds of nothing more than lazy breezes, it seemed as though the beasts would not return.

She scrambled away from the two that held her – one quick glance up confirmed that it was Mark gripping her left arm and Ced holding her right – and stumbled through the sand to the apparently dead creature. She slowed her pace when she got closer, carefully kicking sand toward it, waiting for it to roar back to life. When it remained motionless, she moved closer.

"Where the _hell_ did you get a gun?" She heard Mark demand. She crouched beside the creature and glanced up; Jesse was standing apart from the group, a revolver in his right hand down by his hip.

"I found it," Jesse said defiantly.

Sam rolled her eyes and hesitantly poked the creature with her index finger. It still did not stir. "Where'd you find a gun on this island, Jesse?" Gwen asked in exasperation.

"It wasn't _on_ the island." Jesse tried to mimic her tone, but failed miserably. "I got it on the plane."

Sam dug her hands beneath the creature's shoulder and heaved it up. Slowly, and with a bit of cursing under her breath, she managed to roll the creature to its back.

"Who the hell would give _you_ a gun?" Mark spat.

"I got it off the air marshal that was on the plane." Jesse sounded triumphant, as if he had just unleashed a crushing blow.

It was quiet for a moment; Sam turned her head to find the entire group exchanging worried glances. "That's right," Jesse nodded. "There was an air marshal on the plane. I think you all know what _that_ means."

"It doesn't mean shit." Sam called as she turned her head back down to the creature. She could feel the tension dissipate slightly among the other survivors. "Air marshals right international flights all the time. Just because there was one on the flight doesn't mean he was there with a fugitive."

"He could have been," Jesse said dejectedly.

"I think if any of the survivors are fugitives, you're at the top of the list of suspects," Mark snarled. "Give me the gun."

"Are you saying it's a bad thing I have it?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Yeah, I bet the ice princess over there thinks the same thing. What d'you think, icicle? You think it's bad that I shot the pig-man who tried to eat you?"

They were approaching her now, though many of the survivors hung back with apprehensive looks on their faces. "My name is Sam, asshole." She said without looking up. "And I think the fact that you shot and killed this thing is a fluke. It's a ghost."

"_What_?" Ced burst through a few of the survivors and practically dove down to her side. "This is a _ghost_?"

"_Was_ a ghost," Sam corrected. "Jesse killed it."

"I thought ghosts were already dead," Ced said slowly, gaze flickering between the beast and Sam's face.

"They are. That's why this is a fluke. I don't know how shooting it with an ordinary revolver worked. It should've just passed right through it. See this?" She touched the wound over the creature's chest lightly, running her fingers through the green substance oozing out, before displaying the pads of her fingers to the small group that now crouched around her. "This is ectoplasm. It's their version of blood. The only weapons that make them bleed like this are ectoplasm-based weapons. Like, Superman comes from Krypton, but Kryptonite is the only thing that can kill him. That," she pointed to the revolver still hanging loosely in Jesse's grip, "is definitely _not_ ectoplasm-based."

"You don't know," Jesse said defensively. "Maybe he was a bounty hunter. A ghost-bounty hunter."

"Are you an idiot?" The statement escaped her lips before she could stop it. Jesse's facial expression darkened, sending a cold feeling trickling down her spine in response. But still, she pressed on. "What would a ghost-bounty hunter be doing on an international flight with an air marshal's badge and a revolver?"

"Undercover, maybe." He said defiantly.

"Did the guy even _have_ an air marshal's badge?" Mark asked with a hint of amusement.

"The point is," Sam said loudly before Jesse could retort, "for whatever reason, that revolver worked this time. But I wouldn't put money on it working again if this thing's friends come back with reinforcements."

"In other words, hand it over." Mark held his hand out.

"What makes you think _you _having this gun is any safer than _me_ having it?" Jesse snarled, yanking the gun away from Mark's hand. "Have you ever even fired one before?"

"It doesn't matter," Mark took a step toward Jesse. "Besides, I'm pretty sure everyone on this island would feel safer if you were unarmed."

"Wanna bet?"

"You'd lose that bet, man," Ced piped in. "Trust me."

Mark's hand was still outstretched toward Jesse. "Hand it over." He said. Indecision blazed across Jesse's face for only a moment longer before he sighed heavily and flipped the gun over. He slapped the butt of the gun against Mark's palm. "Thank you," Mark smirked.

Mark turned, jogged to the water, and hurled the gun into the ocean.

"Wh…what…" Jesse's mouth fell open. Sam stifled a laugh behind her clean hand, turning toward Ced as she did. Mark rejoined the group, a satisfied smirk on his face. "What the hell was _that_?"

"We don't need it." Mark shrugged.

"What if the ghosties come back?"

"It won't work against the 'ghosties,'" Sam said. Even she winced at how bored she sounded. "Like I said before, it was a fluke that it worked against this one."

Jesse gaped at them a moment longer before his jaw snapped shut and his eyes darkened. "Don't come crying to me when they raid the beach and kill you all off one by one." He spat before turning on his heel and storming away.

"Is this what made the noise last night, then?" Ced asked nervously, drawing Sam's gaze down from watching Jesse's retreating back.

She frowned. "I don't think so," she said, lightly fingering one of the creature's tusks. "The sounds it made didn't sound like what we heard last night."

"Okay…so…" Mark ran a hand over his head, his fingers gripping, as if he wanted to tangle them in his hair. He seemed a little surprised at the texture of his buzzed hair beneath his fingertips. "What does this mean?" He asked finally.

"It could mean a number of things," Sam said clinically, wiping the ectoplasm off her fingers in the sand. "What are you asking, exactly?"

"Why did the revolver work against it?"

"Honestly? I don't know."

"How did it get here?"

"There's an alternate dimension that's sort of like a parallel universe to ours called the Ghost Zone. It's where most ghosts stay when they're not here."

"_Ghost Zone_?" Gwen repeated incredulously. "That doesn't even sound real."

"It's real," Sam said firmly without looking around. "I've been there. Trust me, it's real." She sighed. "Because the natural connection between our world and the Ghost Zone is a little unstable, temporary rips between the two can happen, and if a ghost is close by on the Ghost Zone side, it can pass through the rip and get into our world. I met a ghost once who could tear a hole between the two with his bare hands…or I guess they were closer to paws. Whatever. Otherwise, they'd need a permanent portal, and there's only one in existence anymore. It's in my home town."

"Is that why it's considered the most haunted city in America?" Ced asked. Sam nodded. "Damn."

"D'you think they came here from your home town?" Gwen asked.

"No, they're actually pretty lazy. They usually don't go far outside of the city if they come through the portal. I highly doubt they flew all this way to this island."

"So they got here through a rip between our dimensions?" Mark pressed.

"That's the logical explanation. But it doesn't explain why a regular bullet killed one," Sam leaned forward over the beast, resisting the urge to touch the wound again. "I've only ever come across one ghost that could be harmed by human weapons, and that was only because…well, he's half-human."

She could practically hear every jaw around her drop open. "Half…_human_?" Ced's voice was strangled. "There's such a thing as half-ghost, half-human?" Sam nodded. "How does that _happen_?"

"It's easy," she murmured, refusing to lift her gaze from the still chest of the beast before her. "You half-die."

* * *

**Chapter five is partially written at the moment, but I don't think I'll have much time to work on it this week.**

**Cue the ominous mid-term background music.**

**But, then again, my spring break is next week, and since I'm a complete loser I have no current plans other than a house-warming party on Friday night. Which basically means I'll have nothing to do but chase down plot bunnies for a week.**

**Which is good for you guys, I guess. (:**

**Thanks for reading!**

**- Tori**


	5. Chapter 5

**Oh wow.**

**Some of you guys were _not_ happy with the way that last chapter ended.**

**Guys, do you honestly think I would make Sam reveal something so huge if no one had ever heard anything about halfas before? I haven't even dug in to the universe this story is happening in. Trust me, okay? No matter how bad Danny and Sam's break up was, she wouldn't ever do anything that might threaten his life.**

**With that being said, this chapter is gonna get in to the background of their universe. I don't want to give everything away, but I'll go ahead and say that I've replaced the events of Phantom Planet with something else. In fact, the events I've replaced PP with kind of deserve their own fic, but I don't even want to think about writing that until this is done.**

**Don't mistake "background of their universe" for "Sam's history up until now." Sam's personal history will unfold as the chapters go on. I'm talking strictly major events in the ghost hunting community.**

**Okay. I think that's all.**

**I don't own Danny Phantom.**

**Enjoy! (:**

* * *

**Tabula Rasa**

**Chapter Five**

**March 6, 2014**

* * *

"Again," Sam whispered.

Soft lights shifted along the walls around her, playing in the dim lighting, and for the thousandth time that day she was grateful for the bad weather outside that forced them to stay inside for the day. The natural light that poured through her window was watery, scarcely qualified to be called light, but it only made the scene in her bedroom that much more enchanting.

Microscopic flecks of cold landed on her face, but she hardly noticed; she was far too engrossed in what was happening just inches from her nose. She watched the lights dancing across her wall slide inward, concentrated in that one spot before her nose, before coalescing and morphing into a bright ball. She knew her eyes were lit with amusement, that a playful smile played across her lips, but she could not help it. It was mystifying.

The brightness intensified for a moment more before vanishing. A heavy, diamond-like object fell from that spot and landed in an already-outstretched hand clad in a white spandex glove with a comically loud thud.

Danny chuckled as she quickly picked the crystal out of his grasp and turned it over in her hands. "I still don't get why this entertains you so much," he joked as she examined the crystal. He flicked his white hair out of his eyes and shifted closer to her on the bed, so that their legs were even more tangled together. It started with both of them sitting criss-cross on the bed, but eventually Danny's legs cramped up and he spread them in a V-shape around Sam. She uncrossed her legs just enough so that her knees were resting against his thighs. They had been sitting there for almost two hours, Sam spending the majority of that time demanding that Danny make the ice crystals he was so good at making for her.

"They're just so _pretty_," she whispered. He snorted. "What?"

"It's weird hearing you call something pretty," he shrugged. "I can't get used to it."

She smirked playfully, tossing the crystal up and catching it with one hand. "Just because I'm the queen of darkness doesn't mean I can't appreciate beauty when I see it," she gestured to the small mountain of ice crystals of varying size spread out on the bed beside her with her free hand.

"Is that why you made me make five hundred of them?"

"Partly. Also because you get this really intense look of concentration that's really cute when you make them." He flushed, his pale ghostly skin fading into a delicate shade of green. _Ghost blushes are so cute,_ she thought, but she refrained from saying out loud to spare him from a more intense blush. "And it helps that you never say no."

"Ah, yeah, that's because you get a really cute look on _your_ face when you watch me make them." It was her turn to blush. "I don't think they're all that great, though,"

"What?" She dropped the crystal in her hand as her jaw fell open.

"I've seen better," he shrugged again and leaned back against her pillows.

He snorted at the look she gave him. "Where have you ever seen _anything_ prettier than these?" She demanded, resting her hand against the uneven surface of the mountain of crystals.

"Well," he leaned forward and pecked the end of her nose, eliciting a surprised, breathless laugh from Sam. "I'm looking at the prettiest thing in the entire world right now."

"Shut up! God, you're so cheesy." She shook her head and pressed a hand against the side of her face in a sad attempt to hide the fact that she was blushing. "I _meant_ as far as crystals go, dummy."

He laughed and fell back against the pillows. "Have you ever seen pure ectoranium?" He asked after a moment of comfortable silence. Sam shook her head. "Do you know what it is?"

"Yeah, it's that stuff Vlad found in space. Right?" He nodded. "That was the stuff he used to try to kill you," her voice softened and she leaned forward, running her hand down his chest, pausing over the place she knew his scar was hidden. Three inches below his heart; she could feel his pulse against her fingertips.

"Tried," he murmured, lifting his hand to cover hers. "It didn't work."

"It almost did," she shuddered at the memories.

"But it didn't," his voice was a little firmer. She met his gaze through her lashes. "It didn't work. I'm still here." She nodded and swallowed thickly. "Well, after Vlad was taken care of and I woke up, they showed it to me. It's…" his breath escaped slowly through his teeth. "It's beautiful. It's so pure and green and…" his hand drifted down her arm absently, his eyes out of focus. "It's so beautiful to look at."

"But it hurt you," Sam said quietly. His gaze slid back into focus on her face. "It caused your parents to find out about your secret and it almost killed you. If your mom hadn't pulled it out when she did…"

That event lead to a painfully awkward few days; watching the conflict in his parents' eyes as they gazed down at their unconscious son, who happened to be an incredibly rare ghostly phenomenon, was gut-wrenching. It brought out a protectiveness in Sam over Danny that she had not known she possessed previously (between her and Tucker, they hardly allowed the Fentons into Danny's hospital room until they swore they would not hurt him). It was what lead to Vlad's exile from Earth, to the ghost hunting community's discovery of halfas, and (most importantly to her) Danny and Sam's relationship moving beyond the friendship level.

"That doesn't mean it isn't beautiful." He said, interrupting her train of thought. "Besides, the portal accident hurt a _lot_ more than the ectoranium did."

She shook her head_. More bad memories_. "You have no idea…I still feel _so_ guilty…"

"Hey," he lifted his hand and cupped her face. "We've talked about this before. You know it wasn't your fault."

"But I _dared_ you t-"

"In case you forgot," he interrupted, "it didn't take much to convince me go in there. I was days away from going in on my own, anyways. I'm just glad you and Tucker were there to get me out when you did. The second explosion would have killed the other half of me."

She dropped her gaze to the comforter beneath them. _The other half,_ she thought. _I killed half of him._

"Don't tell me you're upset that it happened," he laughed. "I mean, honestly. Where the hell would we be right now if it hadn't happened?" He was shaking his head at her, obviously amused. "It was gonna happen, regardless of what any of us could have done differently. Remember what Clockwork said? If something's meant to happen, it'll find a way to happen, no matter what. And then _you_ taught me that everything happens for a reason. Right?"

* * *

"I think I remember hearing about that. They're called halfas, aren't they?" A man in the outer rings of the group called. Sam's head snapped up. "Did you know him personally?"

"No, I never learned his name." She ignored the burning in her cheeks. "He lived in the Ghost Zone while I knew him because he was afraid of what his family and friends would do if they learned what he was. He told me that they all thought the accident that made him what he was had actually killed him."

"I guess they were half-right," Ced sounded like he was going to be sick. "Do many people know about them?"

"People heavily involved in the ghost-hunting community know about them. Jack and Maddie Fenton accidentally discovered them seven years ago." Her throat burned around their names. "They didn't want a lot of publicity about it, though, because they believed that halfas have the capability of operating with morals, and they were afraid that if other ghost-hunters found out about halfas, they would start targeting halfas." _Whatever it took to protect their idiotic son,_ she growled inwardly. "But because of their human half, they still empathize with humans, so when the community finally did catch on, they were really supportive. Halfas are much more likely to use their powers for good, if at all, than full-on ghosts. They're still not super widely known, but word's getting out and more people who aren't involved in the ghost hunting community are learning about them."

"Are there a lot of halfas?" Gwen asked, sounding genuinely interested.

"The Fentons theorize that there are hundreds all over the globe, but since they're so used to living in secret, there aren't a lot that have willingly come forward." Sam lied smoothly. She'd told the lie for seven years; even though she was severely out of practice, the words rolled off her tongue easily. "You know the term, 'you scared me half to death?' They think it comes from the existence of halfas. They think halfas have existed in their own underground community for a long time."

Sam had only ever known three halfas in her life. Danny, obviously, was the first she'd ever met. She would never forget the day it happened; his screams of pain still echoed through her nightmares some nights. She met Vlad second, and he directly contradicted the human-half-causes-empathy-in-halfas theory Jack and Maddie developed in the name of protecting Danny from other ghost hunters. Danielle was the third, and sometimes Sam had to remind herself that the female halfa was actually a clone created in Vlad's lab. It had been so long since Sam had seen Danny's "cousin" that she had a hard time remembering the girl's face. But, as far as she knew, they were the only three halfas in the universe. There was even an incredibly likely chance that Vlad was long-since dead (considering he'd been a "space nomad," as Tucker used to jokingly refer to him as, for close to a decade), leaving Danny and Dani the only two halfas in existence.

"Wait…does anyone remember that guy, uh…Vladimir…something?" A woman to Sam's left piped up. "I remember hearing about him on the news, but they didn't use that word. They said he was born with some kind of genetic mutation that gave him ghost powers or something, I think. Didn't he try to kill someone?"

Sam clenched her jaw. "He was a halfa, and it wasn't a genetic mutation from birth. He was involved in a lab accident when he was in college that gave him his powers. And yeah, he did try to kill someone. He used a substance called ectoranium in an attempt to kill a particularly powerful ghost whom he perceived to be a threat." A murmur rippled through the crowd. "He was the exception to that whole empathy theory. They exiled him from Earth."

"What's ectoranium?"

"It's an element whose entire chemical structure is based on ectoplasm. Remember what I said earlier about ectoplasm-based weapons being the only thing that can hurt ghosts?" She felt them nod. "Ectoranium is to ghosts what Kryptonite is to Superman. It's the only substance in existence that can completely kill them. They can't even touch it in it's pure form without getting weak."

"I don't mean to interrupt," Mark said weakly, "but…we really need to figure out what this thing is and where it came from." He gestured to the creature.

"Yeah, also, why is it dead?" Ced added thoughtfully. He paled. "Not that I'm complaining."

"No, you're right." Sam stood and dusted her hands off on her jeans. "We know there are at least two more on the island, and we need to figure out where they came from and why they can die."

"D'you think this is a halfa, too?" Mark asked, skirting around the creature's head to stand beside Sam.

"No." She glanced down at her feet. "Halfas are strictly humanoid. The only thing that causes this kind of mutation is experimentation. Vlad used to experiment on ghostly animals all the time, and this looks like something he would do."

"But he's exiled from Earth," Ced protested.

"I know he is. I'm just saying, this isn't a naturally occurring creature. Someone experimented on a ghost and created a weird killer hybrid thing. Maybe they compromised the thing's invincibility to human weapons during experimentation." _That's the only answer that makes sense,_ she thought. "I think it was a mistake made in whatever lab this was produced from."

"Is it safe to assume that the lab is on this island?" From the edges of her vision, she could see Mark, Gwen, and Ced exchange glances. A vivid memory of the black electrical cord flashed through her mind, and she knew they were all thinking the same thing.

"It's a very good possibility." Sam said quietly. If the other survivors looked worried before, it was nothing compared to the way they looked right then. "I'm not saying it's definitely here," she said quickly, trying to diffuse the tension. "I just…I think that we should be prepared for the worst possible scenario, which would be the lab that is mass producing ghost hybrids is on the same deserted island as us."

The group immediately dispersed, breaking into smaller groups and busily discussing possibilities, but before Sam could strike out down the beach on her own Mark waved her over to where he and Gwen were standing. "It's that cord, isn't it?" Gwen asked excitedly. "That cord'll lead us right to the lab!"

"We should go back and follow it." Ced paced slightly between Sam and Mark, nodding and rubbing his hands together, looking as if he was ready to devour a feast.

"I don't know," Mark said, looking doubtful. "We shouldn't just assume that the cord will lead us to the lab. We shouldn't assume the lab is even here. All of this is guesswork, remember? The only thing we know for sure is that there are two more of these…ghost…pig-man…_things_ in the forest. Everything else is an assumption."

"I think we've got enough evidence to support the idea of the lab being on this island," Sam said, crossing her arms over her chest and arching an eyebrow. "Now, whether or not it's still in operation is questionable. Trust me, those things wouldn't have flown here from somewhere else. Their body mass is too high to support flying long distances. Speaking of, I think it's also safe to assume that this island is pretty much in the middle of nowhere, since we _still_ haven't seen any rescue ships or planes."

Mark sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, sending a curious pang through Sam's heart. "I think we should keep working with a 'hope for the best, expect the worst' kind of mentality. It's not ever a good idea to make assumptions, but we can prepare for the worst possible scenario. We _should _prepare for the worst possible scenario. It's how I've lived my whole life so far."

"Really? So, like, you're _always_ prepared for the worst _possible_ outcome in _any_ given scenario?" Ced asked. His face was straight, but Sam recognized the playful glint in his eyes. She had to hold back a laugh.

"Yes. You have to be in the OR." Mark had not caught on to Ced's intentions.

"So you were prepared for your flight from Australia to New York to go down, leaving you with fifty survivors on a deserted island that also happens to be home to some kind of ghostly genetic lab that's mass-producing ghost monsters who want to eat you?" He panted. He said the entire question in one breath, and by the time he finished, Mark was rolling his eyes and shaking his head.

"I know I'm a doctor, but that won't stop me from punching you in the throat."

"Bring it, doc!"

"Boys!" Gwen snapped her fingers between the two, unable to suppress her grin. "Can we focus? We've got bigger problems." They were still smiling, though the serious demeanor of the conversation was already back in full swing. "Should we tell the rest of the group about the cord?"

Sam shook her head slowly, watching Jesse angrily kick sand up thirty yards down the beach. "I don't think we should. It'll just cause more unrest. People will start to get scared, and that's when the real problems will come up. If we can keep everyone calm, we might stand a chance at surviving whatever else is on this island until rescue comes."

"I think we should try building a signal fire. You know, so that they can see us from far away," Ced glanced down the beach. "We might try burning the fuse lodge? This is gonna sound terrible, but…it's starting to…er…smell."

Sam choked down a swell of nausea from the pit of her stomach. "I don't know if that's such a good idea," she said when she finally managed to find her voice again. "It'll give away our position to whoever else is on this island. It's gonna be hard enough to stay hidden with as many survivors as we have at this point. We don't want to paint a bull's-eye over our location."

"Assuming whoever's running the lab didn't hear all the commotion yesterday when we crashed." Gwen muttered darkly. Mark shot her a look. "I'm just being honest," she shrugged.

"Since they didn't immediately make contact, we should just hope that they missed it for whatever reason," Sam said. "We need to talk about going back for the cord. Are you guys still up for following it tonight?"

"Maybe we should wait," Mark said, shifting his weight from one foot to another uncomfortably. "We should wait and see if rescue comes tonight. If they don't come tonight, we can follow it tomorrow. We'll have to go back for more water tomorrow, anyways,"

Gwen looked as if she would love nothing more than to argue with Mark, so Sam intervened quickly. "That's reasonable." She said quickly, ignoring the look Gwen gave her. "We'll hang out here for today. It's good, this way, we'll be here if those ghosts come back later. It'll also give us a chance to see if that light and siren happens every night."

A strong breeze gusted down the beach, kicking up a tremendous amount of sand that whipped at their faces and made speaking impossible. Sam lifted her hands and turned her head away, squeezing her eyes shut in a desperate attempt to keep the sand out of her vision. She heard the muffled shouts from the other survivors, coupled with grunts from Mark and Ced. Something heavy landed against her right shoulder but did not make purchase; she glanced down to find that the wind had barreled Gwen over.

Something stark white was just beyond the line of trees, almost completely shrouded in shadows; she could see it from the edge of her vision. Sam blinked, trying to see clearly through the sand, but before she could get a good look, it was gone.

* * *

**Does that make sense, now?**

**People already know about halfas. They don't know identities of those halfas, but they know that halfas exist.**

**Okay. Now.**

**I haven't even started on chapter six, but I'm gonna shoot for middle-to-end of next week. Maybe before then, maybe after then. Like I said, it's mid-term season and I've still got two more tests tomorrow and I would like to take a few days off to decompress. And then there's work and blah blah blah...**

**Meh.**

**Okay. Thanks for reading!**

**- Tori**

**P.S. For those of you who have a Tumblr, a link to mine is in my account if you're interested in checking me out. I post a lot of stupid things I find funny and also pictures of Benedict Cumberbatch (I DON'T EVEN WATCH SHERLOCK GOD WHY IS HE SO ATTRACTIVE TO ME SHOOT ME).**


	6. Chapter 6

**So...if you're just starting on this, I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that I did start this before the Malaysia plane vanished. It is in no way related to that flight. I am deeply, truly sorry if this has offended you in any way. It is based on the American television show _Lost_, as I mentioned in the A/N of the first chapter.**

**Again, I am very sorry if anyone has been affected by the Malaysia flight that went missing. This is a work of fiction, and I mean absolutely no harm by it at all.**

**Okay. That being said, I'm _so_ sorry it took me so long to update this. My spring break was a little crazier than I anticipated and then I was in such shock about the Malaysia airline...I thought it would be a little insensitive to update in the middle of all of that. I apologize to those who were waiting on me.**

**Weeeeeeee though**

**Okay! That's all I got.**

**I don't own Danny Phantom.**

**Enjoy! (:**

* * *

**Tabula Rasa**

**Chapter Six**

**March 31, 2014**

* * *

"Sam. _Sam_!"

Sam jerked away from her canvas. "What?" She called with a heavy, tired voice.

Dex's head appeared in the doorway to their bedroom down the hall from where she stood. "I knocked a box of your stuff down in the closet on accident. I know you don't like me touching your stuff. Will you come clean this shit up?"

Annoyance with him made her bristle, but she placed her paintbrush on her towel carefully and wiped the wet paint off of her fingers before trudging down the hallway without a word.

Dex was cross-legged on their bed in the middle of an array of papers when she reached their room. She paused in the doorway, eyes sweeping over the pages quickly, before looking up to find him watching her over the top of the page in his hand with an icy glare. "D'you need something?" He asked sharply.

She rolled her eyes. This was hardly their first fight; the last few months of their two-year relationship had been rocky at best. Recently, though, things had taken a violent turn. Sam found herself cleaning up shattered glass from something one of them had thrown more often than not at the end of their arguments. She found herself just flat-out giving up mid-argument, something she swore to herself she would never do when she was younger. _It just isn't worth it,_ she caught herself thinking.

An old shoebox was lying face-down on her closet floor. The lid was several inches to the left, and a few of the box's contents managed to break free before it landed. She could see frayed corners peeking from beneath the box from her vantage point. With a heavy sigh, she settled on the ground beside the box and slowly lifted it with ginger fingertips.

A mountain of stuff immediately spread the moment the box was removed. Sam inhaled sharply. Much of the contents were things she'd since forgotten she'd had; old notes passed between her, Danny, and Tucker were folded, the visible writing faded against the yellowing paper. Little gifts her grandmother had gotten her each time she left the country were buried among the letters, and a few old polaroids were scattered among the contents as well. Sam gently plucked the first one she saw from the wreckage and had to work hard to remind herself how to breathe when she saw who was pictured. Danny looked exactly the way she remembered him, all blue eyes and crooked grin. She was in the picture, too, though she looked much younger there than she felt sitting there on the ground. The picture was taken just two-and-a-half years earlier, right before everything went to hell and she moved here, but she felt decades older. In the picture, she was leaning back across his chest, her eyes closed and mouth open. She could remember taking that picture. She'd been laughing at something he said right before she hit the button. Tears blurred her vision and she quickly threw the picture back into the box, face-down so that she would not have a chance to see it again.

The second polaroid was of all three of them, taken by Jazz. That night was crystal clear in her memory; it was an impromptu game night at Tucker's apartment. They'd busted out the beers from Tucker's refrigerator and a game he discovered called Cards Against Humanity. In the picture, Tucker was judging Danny, Sam, and Jazz's cards. Tucker had just read one of the cards out loud, and it had been so funny, Danny snorted hard enough to send beer straight out of his nose. Sam could not help the grin that lit her face as she studied the picture.

"Are you gonna clean it up or is it just gonna sit there for the rest of our lives?" Dex demanded, breaking into her reverie. With a heavy sigh, she began shoveling the contents up with earnest, dropping them into the shoebox. Her arms felt weak and tired.

One handful of paper sent something hard and heavy scattering across the floor. Sam froze, eyeing the object on the ground with a strange mixed sense of fear and wonder. Dex did not say a word; he was still too absorbed in whatever the papers he'd pulled down said.

A lone ice crystal sat demurely on her closet floor. Sam's lungs suddenly felt full of lead. She could not draw a breath. _When did…did I take…I thought I…_

Slowly, as if she feared it would attack her, Sam leaned forward and grabbed the crystal. Her hands shook violently as she brought it close to her face and examined the half-dollar-sized object. She'd been so certain that she got rid of all of them when she moved in to her house, but apparently she missed one. Memories flooded through her mind, so sharp and vivid she could almost feel the flecks of cold hitting her face again. The seemingly permanent ache in her heart subsided for a moment.

"You should throw all of that garbage away. It's taking up space and collecting dust." Dex called.

She tightened her fist around the crystal as the pain flooded back. "No, I think I'll keep it all."

* * *

"Oi! Look! My Guitar!" Ced's voice carried over the sounds of the crashing waves. Sam brushed her hair away from her sweaty face and squinted across the beach, watching Ced drag a battered guitar case out of the water. A smile tugged at her lips as he popped the case open and whooped excitedly. "Not a scratch on her!"

"Not sure how a guitar's gonna help us build a shelter, Ced!" Mark called, hammering a large bamboo trunk deep into the sand with a chunk of debris from the plane. It was the fourth trunk he'd hammered into place, creating a large square that would serve as the frame of a shelter big enough to house all four of them while they slept at night. Gwen snorted and reached for a corner of the tarp in Sam's hands, and together they stretched it across two of the stakes.

"Little known fact," Ced said when he reached them, plopping down in the sand with a toothy grin. He strummed the instrument and cocked his head toward the neck, apparently forgetting he was in the middle of a sentence in his concentration on tuning the pitch. "I'm in a band back in England." He said when he was satisfied.

"Really?" Sam asked, taking the opportunity to lean against her stake and catch her breath. "Would we have heard of you guys?"

"Nah, we haven't really gotten much bigger anywhere besides England," he kept his head down, but Sam could see his face redden. "S'actually kind of why I was in Australia to begin with." He was strumming rhythmically, and the notes were beginning to sound like a song. "Me and the band were trying to tour, but…I dunno. No one wanted any tickets, I guess. We had to cancel after the first show. The whole thing was a bust."

"So you were there with your whole band?" Gwen asked quietly. She, like Sam, was still; the tarp brushed against her legs as a breeze picked up across the beach.

"Well, yeah, but they weren't on the plane with me. They went home the day before. Tuesday, I guess. They caught a flight to Los Angeles to talk about a record deal with the executives at Stars'n'Stripes record company that should be happening sometime today."

"That's the same company that signed Ember McClain, isn't it?" Sam asked, recognizing the label from the back of the ill-fated pop star's single album.

"Yeah," Ced paused his strumming motion and grinned widely at Sam. "You a fan of hers?"

"No," Sam shook her head quickly. The tarp in her hand tugged up and one glance to her right revealed Mark pulling the third corner up and tying it around the stake he'd just hammered into place. "She's actually a ghost," she said as she finished tying her corner.

"What?" Ced, Gwen, and Mark gasped simultaneously. Sam could barely contain her smug grin. "Ember was a ghost?"

"She still _is_ a ghost. She gets her power from people chanting her name. That's why her only song was about remembering her name."

"Huh," Ced grunted. The four were quiet for a moment, losing themselves in the rhythm of building their shelter, before Ced began to strum again. "Well, I'm not a ghost. I swear." Sam snorted. "I just really like playing music, and these guys were interested in giving us a shot."

"Why'd you stay an extra day?" Gwen asked, securing the last corner of their makeshift roof and kneeling to secure the excess tarp further down the post.

Ced shrugged, eyes on the strings of his guitar. "I just wanted a day away from the guys to wallow in self-pity. My dad always told me that I should give myself some time to accept my failures, but I should be sure to not dwell on them forever. I needed that time to accept the colossal failure that was our Australian tour. Plus, it's a beautiful country."

Gwen straightened and hummed thoughtfully. "What about you, Mark? What were you doing in Australia?"

Mark huffed for a few seconds, pretending to be busy in the sand beside their shelter. "I was visiting some family," he said finally, refusing to look up.

Gwen furrowed her brow and shot a confused look at Sam. Sam shrugged in response. "Okay," Gwen shook her head. "What were you doing there, Sam?"

Sam sighed and studied the frayed ends of the rope she'd been given when they first started building their shelter. "I've lived there for four years," she said, twisting one end around her index finger.

"Oh, wow. What were you plans for the States?"

"I…well, I was trying to make sure it wasn't a mistake to move to Australia, y'know?" Gwen nodded in understanding. "My fiancé -"

Gwen gasped as one of the strings on Ced's guitar panged loudly, having been plucked too hard. "Oh my God -"

"No, it's okay. He didn't…we…I think we ended it before I left. I took the ring off before I left for the airport, but he'd stormed out earlier. I don't even know if he's been home since then. We've been fighting a lot lately and that's part of why I've been doubting my decision to move there." Gwen nodded slowly, a strange look of panic still glinting in her eye. Ced's shoulders were tense as he hunched over his guitar. "It's okay. It's not a big deal. Let's talk about something else. What about you? What were you doing there?"

"My brother died there last week. I was there to identify the body." There was no pain in her voice, just a mundane sense of finality. Ced's fingers fumbled over the strings as his head snapped up toward her; Mark shuffled forward on his knees and touched her arm. "It's okay. We…we kind of knew it was coming."

"That doesn't make it any less sad." Sam murmured. Gwen glanced up at her and smiled weakly.

"Since you're kind of an expert…do…do all people become ghosts when they die?" Gwen asked breathlessly.

"No. It's just the ones who are so obsessed with something in our world that they can't move on to whatever's on the other side."

Gwen nodded. "Good. He wasn't obsessed with anything. He moved on."

The four fell quiet again, save for Ced's quiet strumming. From her position beside the shelter, Sam had the perfect view down the beach toward the rest of the survivors. Were it not for the horrific event that landed her there or the strange occurrences she'd experienced since, the island could have been a relaxing and beautiful place. The other survivors seemed to be loosening up slightly; the terror was not so suffocating anymore. They were all working together to scavenge anything that could be used for shelter, and building those shelters up by the tree line. It had been a serious debate, where to build the shelter; half wanted to stay as far away from the trees as possible, fearing the beasts might return, while others were wary of the damaging rays of the sun and wanted as much shade as possible. Eventually, immediate needs won out, and with only a little bit of grumbling the group set up along the tree line.

Most of the shelters were finished by that time; several survivors were loping down the beach. A father and his son were playing catch near the water. The woman Sam had seen sobbing in the sand just before she met Ced was tanning, stripped down to nothing but her underwear and lying on her stomach in the sand. That woman's cousin (or brother, Sam was still not sure) was still putting the finishing touches on their shelter, though he was throwing continuous dirty looks that the woman in the sand.

"Why haven't the rescue boats come yet?" Gwen suddenly asked. The woman was gazing out across the ocean, chewing the inside of her cheek and studying the horizon. "They've noticed that we're missing, right? Do you guys think…what if they aren't looking for us?"

"Oh, come off it. They're looking for us."

"Well…they wouldn't look for us if they have evidence that we didn't survive," Mark piped up. The music suddenly stopped as every eye turned to Mark. "I mean…did you guys notice the front and back ends of the plane aren't here? It's just the fuse lodge. _Part _of the fuse lodge, too. They could have found one of the other ends somewhere in the water and just…assumed that we sank, too."

A glance at Gwen's face had Sam scrambling to her feet. "But that's only a possibility," she said quickly. "It could be that we're so far off course that it's taking a while for them to catch up with us. Just because they're not here yet doesn't mean they aren't coming."

"Sam's right. What I said was just one possibility. There's a good chance they're still on the way," Mark rubbed the back of his neck, shooting Sam an apologetic look when Gwen was not looking. "I'm sorry, I made it sound like there's no hope. There's…well…no, of course there's always hope."

"Can I talk to you privately for a second?" Sam whispered as Gwen crawled through the sand toward Ced. Mark nodded, stood, and offered Sam a hand up. She accepted and together they moved several feet away from their shelter, just out of earshot of Ced and Gwen. "You've got to work on your bedside manner."

"What?" Mark furrowed his brow. "This isn't -"

"I know she's not a patient waiting for surgery, so the situation is a little different, but you've got to treat it the same way. You wouldn't tell a man who's dying of heart disease that there is absolutely no hope, would you?"

"I would if it's the truth!"

"Okay, fine. _Don't _do that here. You've got to help her believe that we still have a chance. Don't make her wish she died in the crash, please. Because if we really aren't rescued…dying of dehydration and starvation will be a thousand times more painful than just dying in the crash. In this situation, you've got to lie. Even if you think that we have absolutely no hope at all, you've got to give her hope. You've got to give everyone hope."

"Sometimes hope is completely debilitating, though."

She had to look away. The other survivors were still mingling on the beach, and, while she could still see some tension in their faces, there was something like pleasure there, too. "We're on a deserted island with no immediate signs of rescue. We were attacked by ghost creatures earlier. There's a good chance a psychotic scientist is here, too." She turned back toward him, meeting his gaze evenly. "Do you really want to take their hope away? It might be the only thing they have left."

* * *

**Blah. I hate that ending.**

**But I guess it's better than a cliff-hanger. Hehe (:**

**Thaaaaaaaaaat's all I got for now. I don't want to put a tentative update goal up because obviously I'm crap when it comes to meeting update goals. So I'll just say...soon.**

**Haha.**

**Thanks for reading!**

**- Tori**


	7. Chapter 7

**I don't own Danny Phantom.**

**Enjoy! (:**

* * *

**Tabula Rasa**

**Chapter Seven**

**April 24, 2014**

* * *

"Sam?"

She did not move, did not even twitch, at the sound of Tucker's voice in the doorway of her kitchen. Part of her wondered why she was not more surprised that he was here; she had not been alone with Tucker in weeks. _Of course he comes over while Danny's out. _It was a rarity lately that Danny leave her alone longer than the time it took her to use the restroom, so _of course_ Tucker would take full advantage of it now. She kept her eyes forward, relishing in the way they burned from her lack of blinking, and remained hunched over in her kitchen chair. Her mug of tea was barely within fingertip's reach. The liquid had long since stopped steaming.

"Sam, please," his voice was as quiet as it was pleading. She heard him step forward, moving slowly through her tiled kitchen toward the table where she sat.

"If you're here to tell me what to do again, save your breath." She mumbled. He edged into her line of vision; his skin was paler than usual in the muted, washed out lighting provided by the bleak day in progress outside.

"I'm not," he said with just the barest hint of annoyance in his voice. Chair legs scraped noisily across the floor as he pulled the chair tucked beneath the table out; his breath left his lungs in a _whoosh_ as he sat heavily across from her. "I just want to talk to you."

"So talk," she grunted. Her gaze rose to meet his for only an instant before she lowered her eyes again, lest he see the desperation glistening in the recesses of her amethyst orbs.

"I can see what this is doing to you," he said quietly. His hands were folded on the table, almost close enough to reach hers. "He's killing you slowly."

"It's just a rough patch," she said, and the words fell from her mouth without a conscious thought. She'd been telling the lie for weeks now. "We'll work through it."

"I don't think so. Not this time." Tucker shifted forward, his fingertips stretching far enough that she could feel their warmth on the back of her hand. But he did not touch her. "Something changed in him. I don't know what. All I know is two months ago, he stopped being my best friend. He got really hostile and territorial around everyone except for you, and he turned into a clingy asshole with you. And don't act like you don't know he's changed, I know you know, I can see it in your face." Sam winced at the truth in his words. "He won't even let you leave the house without him anymore. I had to _sneak_ over here, Sam."

"I know," her voice was scarcely louder than a whisper. "I know."

"I never, _ever_ thought I'd say this, but…I think you need to leave him. I think you need to tell him that you need some space, or a break. Whatever it takes. I think you need to get out of here for a little while."

"Where would I go?" She could feel the tears rising, the urge to sob creating in a knot in her throat that made swallowing difficult. She finally lifted her gaze, and his facial expression was pained. "I can't stay with you or Jazz because he'll find me there, and I can't go to anyone's parents because they'll figure out something's going on. I can't hide." _I don't want to hide,_ she almost added, but thought wiser of it. Part of her still believed the old Danny was in there, somewhere, buried beneath a million miles of the border-line psychopath he'd recently become. Tucker, however, did not share this belief with her. Surprisingly, neither did Jazz.

"I think you should leave the state for a while, maybe," Tucker said softly. "Just go somewhere he'd never look. Montana or Utah or something, somewhere completely random." He leaned forward in his seat, hand finally sliding over hers and squeezing gently. "I'm afraid that he's going to do something really, really bad to you, really, _really_ soon."

"He's your best friend," she whispered as she dragged her thumb down his index finger absently.

"Not anymore." He said firmly and coldly. "He stopped being my best friend the day he told me I'm not allowed to see you anymore unless _he's_ there." Sam winced and squeezed Tucker's fingers subconsciously. "You're my best friend, my _only_ best friend, and I feel like I need to protect you from him right now. I don't want to see you get hurt anymore."

"He hasn't _hurt_ me, though," Sam mumbled. "That's the thing. He's been clingy and obsessive, but not hurtful. It's hard to justify leaving him when he hasn't even really _done _anything to me."

"He's oppressing you," Tucker fired at her instantly. Inwardly, her eyebrows rose. _So Tucker _does _listen to my animal rights speeches, _she thought. "He's not letting you have any freedom. He's put you in a cage, and you and I both know how much you _hate_ being in a cage."

* * *

The survivors spent most of that day lounging beneath their respective covers, watching the horizon intently for any signs of rescue. When Sam and Mark returned to their shelter, Ced shifted over just far enough to make room for Sam to sit down beside him. She remained there, reclining back on her hands, while Ced played his guitar. At one point, he even began to sing a few songs his band wrote, and, upon positive encouragement from Sam and Gwen, he sang through their entire playlist.

"That's the last one," he said regretfully as he plucked the last chord.

"You should write some more," Gwen suggested, shielding her eyes from the sun.

"Yeah, it's not like we're super busy with other stuff right now," Mark laughed, gently toeing the sand pooled around his feet bare feet. Their shoes and socks were all piled together to Mark's right.

"I _did_ have an idea for a new song," Ced muttered, turning his gaze back to the neck of his guitar. "I'll play what I have so far for you guys. This one's called, _'oh no, the scary pig man ghost monsters are trying to eat Sam.'_"

This earned a hearty laugh from Mark and a playful punch from Sam. "You're lucky I like you, or else I'd kill you," she warned as Ced began to sway in time with the song.

"I don't doubt that for a second," Ced grinned, never missing a beat in his new tune.

When the sun began to set, the survivors who were splashing in the shallow water of the beach made their retreat back to the shelters. Someone shouted something about searching for firewood, which drew Mark, Sam, Gwen, and Ced from their shelter to further down the beach.

"It'll be dark, soon. We should build a fire, a _big_ one. Bigger than all three we had last night." Jesse was saying when Sam was within earshot.

"I don't know if that's such a good idea," Mark said loudly. While the group of survivors surrounding Jesse immediately turned to appraise Mark, Sam noted that Jesse kept his head down and his eyes closed. "Now that we know those other things are on the island, we don't want to give our position away."

"They already know where we are," Jesse said through clenched teeth. "We killed their leader off a few hours ago. Well, _I _killed their leader off."

Mark exhaled slowly, his breath hissing through his throat. "It's not smart to light a signal fire, regardless," Sam said before Mark could retort. "There's a good chance that the two that ran away were disoriented and won't be able to find their way back here on their own. Mark's right, lighting a fire could create a smoke signal that could cause them to find us again." When the tension did not settle, Sam tried again. "We could probably get away with small fires, and I mean _small_. It can't be like it was last night."

"If we light that fuse lodge up, it'll make a smoke signal three miles high," Jesse snarled, though through the violence Sam heard a desperate plea. "Plus…and I, uh…no offence to the folks still inside it, but…the smell's gonna start attracting wild animals. We're killing two birds with one stone, here. What if there are search crews just out of sight? What if they're just over the horizon, but they can't see us? Lighting the fuse lodge up in a signal fire could be the difference between life and death for us on this island!"

"There's no guarantee that there is rescue out there," Sam said gently and slowly. A new kind of tension was spreading through the group, one tinged with a melancholy that made her heart ache. "I believe that they are looking for us, and I believe that they will find us, but…there's no guarantee that they're right over there. There _is _a guarantee that something is in the woods. Two somethings. And those somethings can probably kill us. Plus, a smoke signal won't do us much good if there's no light for rescue to see it with."

"There's the pep talk I've been waiting for," Ced muttered under his breath, but no one laughed.

"We can't risk it. Not with the possible consequences. Light fires if you want, but keep them small and contained. Try to keep the amount of smoke to a minimum."

"I need to check the stitches," Mark murmured as the group dispersed.

"Let's get a little light and then you can check." Sam said, stooping to gather driftwood half-buried in the sand.

"I thought I saw a dead tree we could pull from over there. Mark, will you help me?" Gwen asked, gesturing toward the tree line.

"Sam…what d'you think is going on here?" Ced asked quietly when Mark and Gwen were out of earshot. "Like…I dunno, it just seems strange that _you_, the ghost expert, survive a plane crash on an island that may or may not be _creating_ ghosts. Seems a bit more than just chance that you ended up here."

"Ced, trust me. I've dealt with my share of conspiracies. I think it was a serious stroke of bad luck that our plane crashed, and I think the universe added insult to injury by making us crash land on an island with a ghost lab on it. But…I don't know. This just doesn't feel like a _plot_ to me. Just a series of unlucky events. It's like Lemony Snicket wrote our plane crash."

Ced was not amused. "Then how do you explain that weird siren sound from the last night? Or that three ghosts found us and almost killed you? I'm telling you, there's something bigger going on here. I have a really bad feeling about it."

Sam lifted her chin and stared hard at a point just above the line where the ocean met the sky. "Like I said, I've been part of my fair share of bigger plots. Some I've known about, others I didn't know until after it was all over. If anything, this is just a sign to me."

"A sign of what?"

"I made the right choice when I moved to Australia." She clenched her jaw and stood, shuffling the driftwood around in her arms to get a better grip around it. "As for the choices I made once I was _in _Australia, well…I've definitely made mistakes. But the move to Australia itself? Not a mistake. In fact, it might be the best decision I've ever made for myself."

"Well, be that as it may. I've got a really bad feeling about this island. In fact, I…I would even say that I've got a bad feeling about _you,_ specifically, being on this island. Don't ask me why, okay? I've always sort of had a sixth sense about this sort of thing," Sam chuckled as they picked their way back to their shelter. "Don't laugh, I'm being serious for once! Honestly," he shook his head and dropped his driftwood at their feet. "Please promise me you'll be careful, okay? Please."

"Alright, I'll be careful. Well, as careful as I can be." Sam began rearranging the driftwood. "But you have to swear that you'll keep that voodoo sixth sense away from me if it starts tingling again, you here me?"

"Wow, you're hilarious. When we get off this island, you should pursue a career as a stand-up comic," he said sarcastically as he knelt beside her. Sam laughed and threw a twig at him, which promptly tangled in his hair.

"No, leave it! You look like an island goddess," Ced batted his eyelashes and smiled theatrically and Sam laughed all the while.

"Ced, you didn't mention your band dresses in drag," Gwen chided as she walked up behind them. Ced's face flushed as Sam fell backwards and clutched her stomach.

"It's our newest gimmick," he said after a moment of stuttering. "Did I not mention we're all drag queens?"

"What?" Mark asked as he drew even beside Gwen, furrowing his brow at Ced. "Who's a drag queen?"

"No one, nothing, don't worry about it," Ced muttered over Sam's howls of laughter. He yanked the twig out of his hair and threw it at Sam, who was laughing far too hard to even feel it bounce off her arm. "You're such a jerk!"

The sun was nearly set by then, painting the island in a dazzling red-and-orange glow. Sam gasped for air, desperately trying to subdue her own laughter, but she needn't have tried.

"There it is again!" Someone shouted. Immediately the four tore out of the shelter and stumbled backwards, toward the water, eyes fixated on the new source of light. Now that Sam was prepared for it, she noticed the light was pulsing slightly, shooting directly upwards. The trees blocked her view of the base, but she guessed it was several miles into the forest.

The wail started up again, and Sam clapped her hands over her ears along with the rest of the group, but she loosened her grip just slightly. Just enough to really listen to it.

The moment the wail died down and the light was gone, Gwen, Mark, and Ced turned to her, each wearing identical questioning looks.

"That wail was unsteady and crude. Whoever the ghost is, he or she hasn't had much practice with the wail yet. It may be a new power they've just recently developed, or it could be a recording." _It isn't as powerful as Danny's, _she thought. "That's good news for us. It means that whatever ghost is on this island isn't as powerful as it could be."

* * *

**So lately I've been posting some of the stuff I write for Danny Phantom to Tumblr, and I've gotten an overwhelmingly positive response. I think I'm gonna go ahead and republish this on Tumblr and update them simultaneously. So basically what I'm saying is, if you follow me on Tumblr, expect to see chapter one of this fic published there soon. And if you don't follow me on Tumblr and you happen upon it, if the original source says it's from ylimemily8, that's me.**

**Thank you for reading! (:**

**- Tori**


End file.
